


She

by isozyme



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crossdressing, Discussions of Sexual Assault, Drunk Sex, Established Relationship, Genderfuck Tony Stark, Homophobia, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting, Kink-shaming, Lingerie Kink, M/M, NSFW illustrations, Offscreen Solicited Anonymous Sex, Self-Loathing, Transphobia, the closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 18:04:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18953203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isozyme/pseuds/isozyme
Summary: Iron Man is strong and muscular and masculine, and Tony Stark wears a three-piece suit and walks with his hips stiff.  No colors other than navy or muted red.  No prints bolder than a pinstripe.  No luxurious silks and linens.  His outfits are tailored to hang crisp and straight, his slacks hemmed to a conservative medium break.  The public won’t know.  Nobody will go digging deeper, for classified ads and witnesses who remember him from half a decade ago.  Steve will never find out all the ways Tony’s ruined himself.





	She

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[RBB Art] All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18951178) by [isozyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isozyme/pseuds/isozyme), [phoenixmetaphor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixmetaphor/pseuds/phoenixmetaphor). 



> Team BATTLE’s entry for the 2019 RBB challenge! It was absolutely fantastic to work with [phoenixmetaphor,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixmetaphor/pseuds/phoenixmetaphor) who gave me so much inspiration, support, and extra art along the way. It was a collaboration through and through, and I’m really proud of the story we created together.
> 
> Set during Iron Man v3 after the Sentient Armor arc. Text rated M, illustrations rated E.
> 
> Steve and Tony (especially Tony) have a difficult time in this one — see tags for details.
> 
> Title from [She](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J7DbO56QOI) by Laura Mvula.
> 
> _You don’t stop, no, you belong to me_  
>  _She cried, maybe it’s too late_

1999: FALL

* * *

Steve tumbles Tony into bed and shows off the cocksucking skills he perfected on someone else.  It would be hypocritical for Tony to be disappointed that he doesn’t get to introduce Steve to the joy of gay sex, to feel bitter that Steve isn’t only for him.  Not when Tony is already filthy, used goods. Tony is thirty-three and there’s not a single inch of pristine territory left on him.

“Fuck, you’re good at everything,” Tony says, and watches as Steve lets a trail of spit drip onto Tony’s flushed cockhead and then follows it with his mouth.

*

Tony knows that eventually Steve’s going to want more than blowjobs.

“I don’t take it up the ass,” Tony blurts, while Steve kisses his neck.

Steve lifts his head and gives Tony a puzzled half-grin.  “Whatever you say, hun,” he says. Nobody but Steve has ever called Tony _hun_ , or _fella_ , or _my sweetie_ ; it’s warm and special, deep in Tony’s chest.  In Steve’s hands Tony is cherished.

But he still -- he can’t.

Steve pauses, then his smile firms up, coy and pleased like he’s figured something out.

“What?” Tony asks.  Steve shoots him a smug look and raises his eyebrows in response.

“I gotta tell you, there’s more elegant ways of asking if you can fuck me.  I haven’t -- um -- done that before, but -- I’m sure you’d make it feel nice.”

“Oh,” Tony says.  Right. Of course that was the implication, and of course Steve would want to be a good boyfriend about it.  “You have no idea how nice I can make you feel, big guy.”

“You want to try tonight?” Steve asks, biting his lip and palming himself through his underwear.

Steve’s never looked at a deep end he didn’t wind up jumping into.  That night Tony doesn’t get more than a couple fingers into Steve, and he still looks up at Tony with his jaw dropped and his eyes teary with pleasure, then comes until his nose runs.

He loves it.  Loves it every time.

Tony’s relieved.  They can have normal, all-the-way sex, and Steve doesn’t try to touch him or lick him, doesn’t even ask.

*

Steve wears briefs -- the sexy kind, not the grandpa kind, even though he’s technically eighty.  The pristine white cotton hugs his ass and his dick, and he smells like laundry detergent even after he takes them off.  Tony wears boxers in dark colors. Nothing that clings. If the fabric is expensive, it’s because it’s odor-repellent and wicks moisture away from the body, not because it’s luxurious or bespoke.

To be honest, Tony’s preference is to be already naked, sprawled out on the sheets and waiting for Steve, on nights when they’re going to have sex.  That way Steve doesn’t have to see how he strips with the grim efficiency of a soldier about to receive a physical. It’s easier if he can scrub a hand over the scarring around his heart’s charging port and sigh at his defects alone.  And if he thinks too hard about _putting on a show_ , the way Steve would never enjoy, the way his addict brain still desperately wants to, will always want to -- well, then he can grit his teeth and shudder with disgusting yearning in private.

 

 

 _1985: SUMMER_  
_Eighteen._

* * *

_Howard dropped a pair of size 12 pumps in front of Tony at the breakfast table.  Jarvis froze on his path to the kitchen to fetch a fresh carafe of orange juice. He stood rigidly in the doorway instead, a silent witness.  Tony’s mother took one last careful bite of toast dipped in coddled egg, then knotted her fingers together in her lap._

_“What fat cow are you dating that wears shoes this big?” Howard demanded, towering over Tony._

_Tony was finally almost as tall as his father at his full height.  When he moved to rise Howard’s hand fell heavy on Tony’s shoulder, bearing down.  Tony stayed in his seat._

_“You went in my room,” Tony said carefully.  He’d left the closet door unlocked, like a goddamn idiot.  Or Howard had a key all along, because Tony had no privacy in his father’s house.  He’d forgotten, because even as bright as he was he’d still never learned a single lesson._

_“Stark men don’t date women with giant freak feet,” Howard plowed on, red with fury all the way up to his temples._

_Tony stared straight ahead at the glossy black heels.  Their scarlet soles reflected burgundy in the mirror-polished wood of the dining room table.  Howard knew no woman was wearing those shoes, he was just too disgusted with what was really happening to say it aloud.  Instead he’d humiliate Tony like this, dare him to shout the truth in front of the people who actually loved him, certain that Tony was too much of a coward to actually do it._

_“You a real man, son?” Howard asked, dangerous and quiet.  His grip was too tight. He leaned in close so only Tony could hear him.  “A proper man can get a girl who’s hot. Find a bitch with big tits and blonde hair and fuck her until you’ve got that through your thick head.  I don’t want to see this shit ever again.”_

_Who knew how much of Tony’s secret stash of lace and panties Howard had unearthed.  Regardless: Tony would throw all of it away, and Howard would sift through Tony’s bedroom as insurance._

_“I’ll leave her,” Tony said, willing his face not to crumble.  It didn’t matter that she was part of Tony. He’d cut her out of his life all the same._

_“Right answer, Tony,” Howard said, finally letting go.  “Smart kid.”_

 

 

2000: SPRING

* * *

Steve’s relationship with the closet is fraught at best.  He’s torn between his natural hatred of secrets and his belief that every American deserves privacy.

He made his feelings on privacy clear even before he and Tony were together.  The National Security Council had dug up some of Tony’s personal history a few years back and made a small fuss over it.

It had been a relief at the time, because all they found was “homosexual tendencies.”  The rest of his past was still secret.

“The constitution may not specifically protect privacy, but every man has unenumerated rights!” Steve had said, stabbing his finger against the NSC report outlining their concerns about Tony’s sexuality.

“The press is free to do as they will,” Steve continued, with a frown that displayed his reluctant acceptance of the realities of fame and paparazzi, “but this is the government!  They don’t have any justification -- what is the _point_ of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell if they still investigate -- and no warrant!”

Tony’s opinion of the closet is simple: he’s staying in it.  The NSC won’t out him; it looks bad for their image. They want him to be discreet, and Tony can do that.  It hurts, of course it hurts, but lots of things in his life cause him pain.  Sometimes there’s no option free from harm. If Tony has to pick between the choice that hurts other people and the choice that hurts himself, that’s no dilemma at all.

It’s fine.  Iron Man is strong and muscular and masculine, and Tony Stark wears a three-piece suit and walks with his hips stiff.  No colors other than navy or muted red. No prints bolder than a pinstripe. No luxurious silks and linens. His outfits are tailored to hang crisp and straight, his slacks hemmed to a conservative medium break.  The public won’t know. Nobody will go digging deeper, for classified ads and witnesses who remember him from half a decade ago. Steve will never find out all the ways Tony’s ruined himself.

 

 

 

 _1994: WINTER  
_ _Twenty-seven._

* * *

_Bethany’s walk-in closet was large enough to spread his arms wide and barely brush the clothes hung on either side.  Even better, it had a floor to ceiling mirror in the back, lit from the top with soft pink lights that flattered the skin._

_Tony loved Bethany; he loved her friendship, her sharp aim, and the smell of her skin.  But he lusted after her wardrobe, and at night after they made love he’d creep from bed and touch her clothes.  He’d press them against his skin and imagine wearing them, wonder if that would deaden the longing inside him that he can’t seem to banish with sex._

_He was careful.  He never touched himself in Bethany’s closet, and he never actually put anything on out of fear of stretching it.  She never found out._

_But it was still giving in to weakness, and when he fell prey to alcohol the first time it made terrible, echoing sense, like one footfall after another._

 

 

2000: SUMMER

* * *

Tony opens the door to the bedroom, putting a little spring in his step, working up anticipation for Steve’s excellent, generous lovemaking.

Steve had made it clear they were having sex tonight, and had seemed excited, keyed up.  Tony assumed Steve was feeling frisky after fighting AIM’s squad of cloned soldiers; they’d been very well-formed and very, very naked.

He sees Steve and the blood drains out of Tony’s everywhere, leaving all his limbs cold and heavy.  It wasn’t the AIM clones. Steve had been eager because he wanted to give Tony a gift. A horrible gift, because Steve is wearing lingerie.

It doesn’t quite fit him.  He wouldn’t have tried it on in the store, and he wouldn’t know his sizes.  Not like Tony -- Tony knows what cup and band size work best with his body as well as he remembers the heft of a rocks glass.

“You’re terrible at asking for what you want in bed,” Steve says.  “And I found some pictures of men like this while I was -- uh -- cleaning.  So I thought, you know.” Steve waves at himself to demonstrate.

The straps of the bra are cutting into Steve’s shoulders.  There’ll be red marks when he takes it off, reminders of where it touched him.

Steve couldn’t have cut Tony deeper if he’d calculated it.

“Usually I’m the one who wears the pants in the relationship, when I’m with a fella,” Steve says, plucking at the bow at the front of the satiny panties.  “But I’ve liked an awful lot with you, so.” Steve crosses his legs, wearing his best game-for-anything smile.

It’s not quite the face he makes the second before he throws his hand out and dislocates his shoulder grabbing Tony as he flies by, but it’s close.

Steve’s dick still looks good, Tony tells himself.  He’s not quite hard yet, not like Tony would be in the same outfit, but Tony could fix that, he could nose against Steve through the fabric and moan like he was enjoying himself and it would still be fine fabric rubbing against his skin, even if the roles were wrong, this has to be the fantasy of a thousand gay men, all those hard muscles trussed up in dainty pastels and Tony feels _sick_.

He has to pretend to be into this.  If he doesn’t -- Steve’s smart. Steve will know that if Tony’s dirty picture stash wasn’t about lingerie on his partners, there’s only one other option.

Tony thought he’d burned all of that years ago, along with the rest.

“All for me?” Tony says, putting a breathy sigh on the end of the question and biting his lip.  He’s succeeded at this kind of calculated seduction before. Steve looks uncomfortable; Tony can tell he’s not into it.  With luck, Tony only has to do this once.

“See anyone else it might be for?” Steve jokes, making a show of looking around the room.

Tony forces himself to smile, laugh a little.  “Guess I’m a real lucky man tonight.”

He pauses, still paralyzed, unable to shake the horrible mantra circling his head, _that should be me, it should be me, it should be me, I’d like it, I’d love it, if only it was me._

“How’s this work?” Steve asks, deciding that Tony’s hesitation means they just need a better plan.  “Do you -- do you call me your girl?” 

“No,” Tony says, too fast, fucking it up.  “Just be Steve, okay?”

He can’t negotiate this, it’s too much, so he steps forward and kisses Steve, runs his hand up Steve’s hard stomach, makes sure his fingertips don’t brush any part of the costume Steve’s wearing for him.  It’s a present.   _Be grateful, Stark,_ he thinks, as Steve’s mouth opens under his.

Steve moans and cups Tony through his pants and, no, God, _no_ , Tony’s not hard at all.

“Tony?” Steve asks, taking his hand away.  “Am I doing it wrong?”

“You’re fine, it’s fine,” Tony says, but Steve is already untangling himself, scooting over to sit on the edge of the bed.  “You did all this for me, I can’t just -- “

“Hey,” Steve says gently, then pats the bed beside him.  “Sit down.”

Tony’s knees practically buckle underneath him.  He wants Steve to have more clothes on, or less, and he can’t ask for either.  He stares at the door and doesn’t think about escape at all. He should have said the pictures weren’t his, wherever Steve found them.  Someone else who lived in the mansion hid them among Tony’s other things. He wasn’t _thinking_.  They could have had a laugh about it, and Tony could have scandalized Steve by making a show of postulating who on the Avengers roster was secretly a kinky weirdo.  Steve didn’t have to know that the kinky weirdo was Tony at all.

“You don’t want me like this,” Steve says, and he sounds _desolate_.

“I’m tired tonight,” Tony lies.  “I’m sorry.”

Steve frowns, quietly radiating disappointment the way he always does when he knows Tony isn’t telling him the truth.  He takes the bra off anyway, then winces and rubs at where it’s cut into his skin. “Dunno how ladies wear these all the time,” he says softly.

 _They wear ones that fit,_ Tony can’t say.

“Not sure,” he says instead, and gets up to change into something soft to sleep in.  “Part of the feminine mystique, I suppose.”

*

Of course Steve follows up, because he’s thoughtful and he hates secrets.  He wants to talk it out, because he believes in the garbage the SHIELD therapists say during the biannual mental health screenings about open communication with his teammates.

Tony hears Steve’s words as if through water.  Steve’s telling him it’s okay. Tony’s faceplate is unsealed; the ocean is choking him, he can’t stand up because there’s a weight clamped on his shoulder like a fist.  This shouldn’t be happening to him, not from Steve, who feels like endless summer, who somehow always smells like fresh grass, Steve who’s _safe_ and _home_ and _good_. Tony’s eardrums, his sinuses -- all the fragile lacunae of his skull -- ache like he’s trapped in a diving bell.

“You went through my stuff,” Tony says flatly, right into Steve’s open, empathetic face.  Tony thought he’d gotten rid of it all. He thought his father’s mansion belonged to him, now.

Steve’s half-finished speech about supporting Tony and kink positivity stops in its tracks.

“Well, I -- “ Steve says.

 _“You went through my stuff,”_ Tony repeats, anger flaring.  “Where was it? In the attic? Under the floorboards?  Was there a stash of my mother’s lipstick tucked in among the pornos?  She wore Dior, did you know? It was Nine. Deep, matte red.”

Steve pulls himself up to his full height, chin up.  His jaw shifts and Tony knows he’s licking the back of his teeth, ready to fire back with something proud and righteous.

“Say it,” Tony hisses.  “Say you don’t trust me.”

Steve takes a step back, pain flashing across his face.  He swallows, still wearing his bravest posture, and Tony’s mechanical heart _hurts_.  This is why he scoured this out of his life, so that he never had to be confronted with it ever again.  No more surprises. Nobody could invade his privacy if there wasn’t anything to find.

“The upstairs toilet sprang a leak.  I was going to fix it up with some putty in the crack, and there was a folder taped to the back of the tank.  I looked inside, and it had magazine cutouts of all these men in underthings. Real attractive, handsome guys.  From the dates -- it had to be from before the Avengers came here. From before you moved out,” Steve says carefully.  He’s uncomfortable, not used to being in the wrong -- Tony could teach him a thing or two about managing guilt.

“Next time, let Jarvis do the house repairs,” Tony says.

“He -- does he know?”

“Of course Jarvis _knows_ ,” Tony snaps.  “Do you think Howard was kind enough to spare his freak kid an audience?”

“I don’t think you’re a freak,” Steve says, back on stable moral ground.  Every inch the sweet, understanding partner. Steve knew how to play this part.  “It’s okay if you like when men dress like that. It’s fine that it doesn’t do it for you when it’s on me.  I’m not hurt.”

“There isn’t anything that could make me think less of you,” Steve continues, still the picture of ernest honesty.  Standing strong for his insecure partner. “I’ve seen you go through a lot of rough stuff, Tony,” -- _the Bowery_ , Tony’s mind supplies -- “and I love you.  At your best and your worst.”

Tony laughs.  He laughs loud and ugly right in Steve’s face.  Tony thinks of a dick in his ass and another in his mouth and how his eyes had watered until mascara ran down his cheeks.  How he didn’t know the man’s fucking name, but he’d still let him drag his thumb through the mess of Tony’s face and call him a beautiful, perfect wreck.

“You haven’t seen _anything_ ,” Tony says, and slams out of the room, still shaking with horrible, sickening mirth.

*

Someone is sobbing in the hall bathroom.

Tony approaches carefully, hoping it’s not Carol, resigned to the fact that it most likely is.  He cracks the door open, ready to make a quick retreat if he encounters someone in a state of undress.

It’s not Carol.

The broad shoulders hunched over the sink are Steve’s.

Steve crying is _wrong_.  It’s like trying to imagine a volumeless mass, or traveling the surface of a Klein bottle and coming back to the same point on the wrong side.  Listening to Steve cry upends Tony with the same sickening lurch he feels whenever he watches magic break the laws of physics.

Tony knocks on the door frame.

Steve looks up into the mirror, and at the sight of Tony’s reflection his face twists like it wants to crumple again into a sob.  Steve grits his teeth, lips pulled back in a grimace, and wrestles it back under control.

“Aw, hell,” Steve says thickly, and wipes his face on a hand towel.  “Sorry. Do you need to use the restroom? I’ll go.”

“No, Cap, hey,” Tony says, holding out a hand.  “Tell me what’s wrong. Is it -- is anyone -- ” _Is anyone on the team dead_ , Tony leaves unsaid.  He doesn’t want to learn the news like this, from Steve red-eyed and raw.  He doesn’t want to make Steve say it; he needs to know anyway.

“Everyone’s fine,” Steve says, snorting back phlegm and swallowing audibly.  “It’s not -- it’s us. It’s me.”

Tony goes cold, the thoughts in his head turning whispery-fast.  He’s had a plan for this since he woke up with Steve in his bed the first time.  Be gracious, don’t demand an explanation or argue, don’t beg, lock down all the self-loathing and bitterness until he can put on the suit and tear up an AIM base or scrap with the Serpent Society so he has a victory to hang onto as a reminder that he’s worth something, Steve or no Steve.

He can’t control outcomes -- the best he can do is avoid being blindsided.

“Okay,” Tony says evenly.  He’s lightheaded, his fingertips are cold, and he isn’t surprised but that doesn’t mean he’s _ready_.

“I never wanted you to feel unsafe around me,” Steve says, shoulders still bowed, head heavy.  “I swear, please, Tony, I’m begging you to believe that. But I still failed.”

The muffled eddies of Tony’s thoughts register that this isn’t what he’d expected.  “I don’t understand,” he says, confused and afraid that Steve is going to start crying again.

“I didn’t _think_ ,” Steve says, tight with inward-pointed anger.  “I had to have my damn pride, so certain that I deserved all your secrets, that I’d do right by them.  I thought you were in the wrong. I tried to convince you -- tell you it was sex you wanted when it wasn’t.  I always told myself I wasn’t that kind of man!”

“Steve, slow down,” Tony says.  “Is this all about the lingerie?”

“Yeah.”

“It was just sex that didn’t work out.”

Steve shakes his head, stubborn.  “Afterwards, we fought, and you were hurting, and I still wasn’t _listening_.”

Tony winces.  He’d been angry; he’d let it show.

Steve turns, posture miserable, chest caved in on itself.  He doesn’t look like Captain America; he only looks sad. “You don’t have to tell me.  But if I -- if I reminded you of something you didn’t want to re-live, if that’s why there’s things you don’t do -- I’m sorry.  Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

It comes together then, why Steve is so torn up.  The conclusion Steve came to, when Tony told him he had no idea what Tony’s worst was.  In combination with Tony’s hangups about getting fucked --

“Sexual assault,” Tony whispers.  “You’re asking if I’ve ever been.”

Steve doesn’t answer; his mouth almost forms a word but he covers it with one of his large, gentle hands before the sound can come out.

“I haven’t,” Tony says, touching the back of Steve’s hand with careful fingers.  He’s had a lot of poorly-considered sex, drunk sex, sex he regretted after, but he said yes to all of it.  It’s been his own fault every single time.

Steve looks at him with wet eyes, and Tony can tell that Steve wants to believe him but doesn’t.  Steve’s weighed the facts and done the research. He’s accepted that Tony will lie to him about this.  He won’t push it, but he also won’t change his mind. Tony can’t fault him; most survivors of this sort of thing don’t tell the truth, and Tony’s own actions paint a compelling picture.

Tony can’t let Steve carry around this guilt, but nothing will be good enough to convince Steve except truth.  He has to lay the entire shameful mess out in front of Steve, or else be responsible for Steve crying in bathrooms.

Tony’s a coward.  He can’t do this right now.

“I’ll explain,” Tony promises.  Steve unbends, fractionally, always willing to hope again.  “Give me twenty-four hours, okay? I need a day, and then I’ll tell you.”

*

Tony hunts for the place he feels safest.  The bedroom is instantly, horrifically out of the question.  He thinks the workshop -- but it’s not right either.

Then he recalls the corner of the Avengers surveillance room that he’s half-accidentally disassembled and turned into an ad hoc workstation.  All his memories at the messy desk are of quiet moments with a soldering iron in hand.

So he dresses in a long-sleeved shirt and baggy grey sweats, discovers that he can’t be bothered with shoes, and calls for Steve.

When he arrives Steve sits down gingerly, crossing his ankles out in front of him, and stares at Tony like he’s facing down a firing squad.

Tony sorts the resistors scattered across the table in front of him back into their tackle box.  Red band, blue band, white, white, gold. _Plink._  Yellow, red, silver.   _Plink._  Steve waits for Tony to be ready, a silent, brave sentinel.  He doesn’t understand that Tony’s never ready for anything. Being ready implies the luxury of problems that heal over time.

“I wanted it to be me,” Tony says simply.

Steve’s brow furrows slightly before he smooths his expression back into respectful openness.  Tony takes a deep breath, whole body taut. He’s tensed on a starting block, waiting for the gunshot and the plunge.

“I didn’t get hard for you in a bra because I don’t get hard to men in dresses.  I’m the man in the dress.”

Steve half-smiles, encouraging.  He doesn’t seem terribly surprised.  “That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.  I -- “

“It’s _not_ okay!” Tony interrupts.  “Anyone looking at you knows Steve Rogers is a real man.  You don’t _get it!_  I turned myself into a weak, vain, desperate thing, for what?  Because I ached to be _wanted_ , because it felt good, and because I’m an addict with no self-control.  Tony Stark is a drunk and a crossdresser who begs to be fucked and I can never take that back!”

He didn’t mean to say it this way.  He’s spilling his guts because he’s in love, he’s stupid, he’s emotional, he’s never going to learn that this is the creature he’s always been and always will be.   _Screw your goddamn head on straight, Stark!  Don’t make me do it for you!_

“Every time I’ve had sex it’s been on purpose.  I don’t have any excuses. Nobody forced me into any of it.”

Tony falls silent, out of steam.  He sorts through some more of the mess on his workbench.  It’s July in New York City -- warm even in the central air of Stark Manor -- but Tony’s grateful that all of his skin is covered.  He drops a small handful of capacitors into an empty mug with an image of Steve’s shield screen-printed on it. He wandered by with a coffee a few weeks ago, and the cup never made it back to the dishwasher.  It’s been collecting bits of Tony’s electronics since.

Eventually, Steve decides that Tony isn’t going to say any more.  “Who made you feel this way?” he asks.

The coldness in his tone makes Tony glance up.  Steve’s expression is careful, blank, and -- invisible to anyone without Tony’s experience reading the man -- furious.

“Who told you all that?  Who put it in your head that there was anything wrong with you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Steve says.  “It matters because I’m going to find that person, and I’m going to destroy their entire life, down to the foundations.  To the bedrock.”

Howard’s face flashes across the back of Tony’s eyelids.  He lifts one shoulder, lets it fall, coughs a dry _hah._

“Too late.  He’s dead.”

 

 

 _1995: LATE FALL  
_ _Twenty-eight._

* * *

_Tony’s dignity fell away in broad, shearing sheets, like wallpaper peeling free after the glue rotted away._

_The drink came first; first was the parties and the vomit and sneaking into other people’s kitchens to search their cupboards to find the scotch when they were only serving wine.  Second he gave away Iron Man. And then he started placing classified ads._  

> _MSM, 28, 6’1, 190_  
>  _Will be your girl for a night._  
>  _Clean, protection non-negotiable._  
>  _MUST BE DISCREET 555-8442_

_The ads cost $1.25 per line.  By the end of October Tony’s was choosing between bottom-shelf whiskey and begging for anonymous sex.  He was gone; he could have whatever he wanted, as long as it didn’t cost more than five dollars._

_He didn’t stop, because if he found the right man, he could feel perfect for whole minutes at a time.  Tony sat in someone else’s bathroom and smoothed the old-fashioned seams of his stockings into a perfect line, admiring the cut of his thigh muscles under the dusky sheer nylon._

_Tony walked into the stranger’s bedroom and watched the man’s eyes go soft and wondering.  “Oh, you beauty,” he whispered. Being wanted was almost as good as being drunk._  

> _MSM, 28, 6’1, 180_  
>  _Flirty femme looking for a good time._  
>  _Tear my stockings, baby. No strings._  
>  _MUST BE DISCREET 555-8442_

_One of his hookups wanted to watch Tony fuck himself with a dildo and left it behind in the motel room afterwards.  He used it afterwards, over and over, during dry spells, but it was never enough. Nothing was ever fucking enough for him._

> _MSM, 28, 6’1, 175_  
>  _Crossdresser looking for multiple men_  
>  _to give it to me good.  No names._  
>  _MUST BE DISCREET 555-8442_

_In December Tony picked apart a seam in the lining of his coat and folded his nylons, garters, bra and silky underwear as flat as he could.  He had nowhere to store anything, so he tucked the precious lingerie inside his coat and hoped no-one would notice the lumps it made._

_On the last night he ducked into the bathroom in the back of a corner store and put himself together one last time.  Straps snug and straight, runs in the stockings stemmed as best he could with dabs of shoplifted clear nail polish. When he looked in the smeary mirror his alcohol-ruined cock twitched.  Beautiful, he thought at his reflection, just once, and then pulled his filthy clothes on over everything._

_That done, Tony sold the coat._

_When they collected his body the coroner would discover he was a freak and a deviant; one last insult to the Stark name from beyond the grave.  He supposed he wouldn’t be around to feel shame anymore. He supposed he didn’t care._

 

 

2000: FALL

* * *

Steve calls him _pretty_ in bed, then claps a hand over his mouth and jerks away, radiating contrition.  Tony pulls their sheet over his body and shivers. It could be a good feeling, or a bad one; in either case it’s private.  He can’t have it while his body is on display.

Experimentally, he reaches under the sheet to touch himself.   _Gorgeous,_ he thinks to himself in Steve’s voice.  Even imagined, the word slides silky across his skin.

“Don’t, hey, it’s my mistake, we’ll stop,” Steve says, eyes wide and pale all around.

“You can say it,” Tony decides.

Steve’s hand finds Tony’s thigh beneath the sheet and squeezes gently.  “Yeah?”

“Just -- only when it’s true.”

*

Tony catches Steve looking at a Cosmopolitan, open to the winter season’s makeup trends, with his lower lip caught between his teeth.  He makes a point of noticing, after that, how Steve acts whenever they walk through a Rite Aid. Steve blushes when they swing past the drug store lipstick.

“Jan’s having a fashion emergency,” Tony lies, once the pattern has become evident.  “She needs nylons and we’re already out, you don’t mind?”

Steve stutters, gulps, and shakes his head.  He hovers the whole time while Tony makes a show of finding Jan’s size, flipping through the packets of no-run, no-slip, sheer hose.  They’re all of garbage quality -- Jan would kill him if he actually brought any of these to her.

“Here,” Tony says, tossing the least atrocious of the selection at Steve.  Incredibly, Steve manages to fumble the catch.

Tony knows that some men love a girl in drag -- he has the experience to prove it a dozen times over.  He hadn’t expected one of them to be Steve. They could have been perfect, a matched set of desires.

It’s not until much later, when he finds the nylons tucked into an inconspicuous drawer in his workshop, that Tony realizes he’s fallen right back into his old patterns.  He’s in his twenties again, buying women’s things on flimsy pretenses and hiding them. He’d been so focused on Steve that he didn’t even notice.

When Tony tosses them in the wastebasket, it’s different from pouring a bottle of single malt down the drain.  It’s just sad: Tony can’t have what he wants, and now Steve can’t either.

*

The Maria Stark Foundation’s publicity team asks Tony for some words about his mother.  A charity gala -- a program that needed an extra block of text to balance out the design.  “Not long, just enough to get a sense of her and why you made all this in her name,” Pepper explains.  “Something human.”

For a moment, all he can think of is what she wore.

The belts she cinched around her waist, the fabric-covered buttons down the front of her dresses, her bright, twinkling brooch in the shape of a starburst.  He had wanted a sliver of the way she used her elegance to push and pull her influence. She traded jewels with Elizabeth Taylor; she shook her head and tied a silk scarf high around her neck if Howard got drunk and handsy in public.

 _Maria was ten times the parent my father was_ , Tony types, then deletes it in a rush, the words burning up through the keyboard into his fingertips.

_Howard Stark didn’t deserve to die, but my mother deserved to live._

He can’t tell anyone about this.  He can barely stand to say it to himself, but he doesn’t have anything else to write that isn’t unbearably empty.

 _When I die,_ Tony writes, closing his eyes so he can’t see the words on the screen, so they’re barely more than thoughts, _I want to have been the person my mom always believed was inside me.  Howard Stark only saw himself in his son. Maria saw a better man. I’ve lived up to every goddamn expectation my father had, and barely a handful of my mother’s.  That’s why I created the Maria Stark Foundation in her name._

The conclusions roll forward, horrible and frictionless, perfectly constant velocity, the energy of his thoughts refusing to bleed off as heat or vibration or a scraping scream of sound.

_She hid parts of herself to survive, putting what she needed aside over and over again in the name of something greater.  But that’s not what she wanted for me! And I’ve failed her. I’m only under the thumb of my own cowardice. What the hell is wrong with me?_

Her signature lipstick, Nine, looked terrible with Tony’s skin.  It was too blue against his gold undertones.

“Presentation is four fifths of everything,” she’d told him once gently, holding the mess of one of his high school electronic tangles cupped in manicured hands.  He’d applied for an NSF grant based on the design and been rejected without even getting a score. His air turbulence sensor had a variety of applications from optimizing jet engines to novel breath-mediated control systems, and it had been dismissed out of hand.

“This is beautiful to you, darling, but the world doesn’t see it.  Put it in a lovely shell, and it will be accepted. What’s special about it for you will still be there inside, safe until you find someone who understands the way you do.”

When Tony built a sleek lacquered housing, Boeing bought the device practically on sight.  Tony remembered that first piece of advice and forgot the second. Steve isn’t the world. He sees the shell and yearns for what’s underneath it.  He’d be gentle with anything Tony gave him.

“I’m going to try, Mom,” Tony whispers aloud.  “I promise.”

He’ll write something appropriate for the gala program later.  Now he picks up the Vogue Steve’s been surreptitiously reading and pages carefully through it.  Colors, parrot-bright, are painted over lips and eyelids.

There’s a few steps left before he crests the point of no return.  He can still screw the lid back on this bottle of temptation and walk away.  He can lock it up with the memories of being drunk and spread open, his flesh spread so taut and thin over his hips that getting fucked left bruises he felt down to the bone.

But then it will always hurt, every time Steve looks at him naked.  He’ll never take joy in his skin. The ugly map of white scars and raised red keloids scribed over his chest will be his only decoration.  The price of being a real man is pain, and he’s not sure it’s worth it anymore.

 

 

 _1996: SPRING  
_ _Twenty-nine._

* * *

_If he’d been in the state of mind to find things funny, Tony would have called himself a bra burner.  This was what all the newly liberated women did; they freed themselves from the shackles of fussy, uncomfortable, expensive lace and went on to live their own lives._

_Tony wanted to escape something else all together._

_Tony’s friends did more than he deserved, moving his things into storage as he was evicted from his properties one by one.  They even took the lockboxes of pretty things that had been in the back of his wardrobe and stored them away, unopened and untouched._

_He poured the single malt down the drain, and then he gathered the lingerie from the storage unit that Rhodey and Clytemnestra rented for him, every scrap.  Tony threw it all into his smelting furnace and watched it burn._

_The nylons made billows of acrid smoke, black char running up them in streaks.  Sequins warped and blistered and fused to the fabric beneath them. The bras went up in bright flame and burned until only the underwires and the metal hooks were left, and then Tony melted those down to slag, too.  The shoes were the worst. The leather twisted in the heat like charred skin, curling in on itself while the wooden heels turned to coal._

_At long last Tony’s tolerance for self-punishment ran dry.  He slammed the furnace shut, turned the temperature high enough to melt steel, and reduced it all to carbon and ash._

 

 

2001: SUMMER

* * *

“It’s not like alcohol, Tony,” Steve says, running a warm palm across Tony’s back.  Tony holds a black camisole in his lap. It’s almost unisex, except for the narrowness of the straps and the barely-there trim around the hem.

“You can’t know that,” Tony says.  He’s so afraid. “How could you ever know that for certain?”

“I do.”

Tony slips the cami over his head, straightens the straps automatically, smooths the fabric flat against his chest and stomach.

“I don’t feel any different,” he says, voice catching on nothing, snagging like rayon on the barely-jagged edge of a nail.  “I’m just me.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, rough and near.  “That’s how I knew.”

*

Tony puts in dark contacts.  He lets the stiffness in his knee that still hasn’t faded from fighting the Mandarin while beaten half to death show in his gait.  He doesn’t shave, wears too much pomade, and puts on a rough New York City accent he hasn’t spoken in a long time.

Then he walks to the garment district.

The last time he was in a fabric store he’d been dating Jan.  There’d been a flurry of salespeople around them, desperate to net the next Van Dyne contract.

Tony had been pleasant, restrained, and hadn’t touched anything.

Now he rubs lace between his fingers and unrolls yards of beaded trim.  Nobody will recognize him; he knows from bitter experience that it doesn’t take much grime to turn him back into a person who doesn’t matter much.

The bolts of fabric lean drunkenly against each other and sag into the narrow spaces between the shelves, lush as jungle foliage.  He brushes past heavy jacquard and painted silk. There’s a cabinet with a hundred tiny drawers of different buttons and closures, priced individually in messy handwriting.

He buys swatches in cash, and wonders how brave he is.

*

Tony sketches the concept for the bespoke lingerie he wants in the same draftsman’s hand he uses to draw out plans for Iron Man.  He tacks the swatches he’s bought to the corners of the drafting paper, turning his fantasy into a set of components and processes.

The figure he draws under the clothes is leggy and androgynous with a blank oval for a head.  Impersonal, safe. Lacking.

He frowns and pencils a goatee over the empty face’s chin.  A few strokes of graphite, and his soul is pinned to the page.  The rush of long-awaited recognition is intoxicating.

 

2001: CHRISTMAS

* * *

 

*

 

 


End file.
